A Requiem for Chelsea Bookstore

This is my story of my corner at The Chelsea Bookstore and the owner who played host to my corner.

Before I start my story, understand that Chelsea and I loved Ernest Hemingway. In a short documentary about the store she called Heirloom Books but that I call The Chelsea Bookstore, books about Hemingway are shown practically everywhere. For me, I learned to love writing fiction after reading A Farewell to Arms in high school; my last correspondence with Chelsea centered on his short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.

In the documentary, Chelsea describes her customers and mentions “a few crazies”. One night, at an event at the bookstore, one of these crazies started throwing a fit at Chelsea: she wasn’t running the event correctly, the crazy knew more than Chelsea did about forming a community, that kind of crazy talk. Chelsea sat there and just listened: polite, patient, concerned. I threw my own fit. I stood up and shouted down the crazy. I told the crazy it was all about them, not Chelsea, and they should get back on board their crazy train and leave the station. Which they did. 

Later, I felt sad that I had disturbed the event. I told Chelsea, “you know, that just wasn’t like me. Yeah, I’m a big Chicago guy, but I am more like Ferdinand the Bull. I wish people would let me sit in a field and smell flowers all day. No bullfight ring or anything.”

“I love Ferdinand the Bull,” said Chelsea.

Then I told her Hemingway had not liked The Story of Ferdinand. The book appeared in 1936, around the time of the Spanish Civil War, and people from both left and right criticized it for its pacifism, even burned it. Hemingway even wrote a rebuttal to it, called The Faithful Bull.

I never read it, nor do I intend to.

Chelsea winced and said “really?” She seemed very disappointed in Ernest for having done that. Not enough to disown him, but she definitely would have taken him out to the woodshed.

After she died, during a vigil I was keeping at The Chelsea Bookstore, I heard from people close to her that Chelsea bore a Hemingway tattoo. A quote from one of his books. Nobody knew what the quote was though. I found it strange that friends should not know that, but strange has been normal for me lately.

Or maybe, it wasn’t all that strange to me. Maybe it was on her friends, being strange. 

Anyway, someone was kind enough to tell me the quote later: it was in Spanish.  It was from Death in the Afternoon, Hemingway’s book-length analysis of bullfighting: "The theory, practice and spectacle of bullfighting have all been built on the assumption of the presence of the sun and when it does not shine over a third of the bullfight is missing. The Spanish say, 'El sol es el mejor torero.' The sun is the best bullfighter, and without the sun the best bullfighter is not there. He is like a man without a shadow." 

When I heard Chelsea had that quote on her, about a bullfight, and thinking about our discussion of Ferdinand … something changed in me. Something about honor and dignity in courage, I think. Or maybe something about finding a corner in a clean, well-lighted place.